Assumpsit
idea · 2 works · 4 mentions · 7 anchored passages
assumpsit · action upon the case
in the texts
The Law of Torts
The historical common-law action, developed from tort liability, later used as the common mode of enforcing simple contracts.
and indeed it was by a special development of this view that the action of assumpsit, afterwards the common mode of enforcing simple contracts, was brought into use.
We also have, by a more artificial process, the modern method of enforcing simple contracts, through the specialized form of this kind of action called assumpsit:
But in order to assure ourselves that the line between breaches of contractual obligation and other causes of action cannot have been regarded as an elementary outline of the law by our mediæval lawyers, we have only to recall the history of assumpsit.
The Genius of the Common Law
The common-law action of contract, formed by combining Trespass and Deceit, which expanded via legal fiction to cover territory once reserved to Debt.
By fiction, the fiction of conclusively presuming that a man had promised to pay what he owed, Assumpsit annexed the territory which formalism would have reserved for Debt.
Blackstone conjectured that the action of Assumpsit, the regular modern action of contract, was the action on the case answering to the thirteenth-century writ of Covenant: